Tax-Advantaged Accounts: Important Dates for Your Calendar

If your cooperative will offer one or more CBA-administered tax-advantaged accounts in 2016, make sure these dates are on your calendar:

September 15: Webinar
“Tax-Advantaged Accounts: Product Updates for 2016” will be held at 2 pm ET on Tuesday, September 15. This webinar will explain new options available for flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) for the coming plan year, as well as review recently added features such as the debit card, FSA carryover and retiree HRA. We’ll review the steps co-ops need to take to adopt new plan features and how to start the open enrollment process online. Register now!

October 1: Deadline for Documents and Forms
All forms and documents required by CBA for plan adoptions, amendments and other changes must be sent to CBA by this date. Please refer to the August 5 I&FS Weekly article for the steps your co-op needs to take to make the plan changes it wishes. Please note that if your co-op is not making any changes to its plans, it needs to send CBA only a completed Payroll and Funding Form and a payroll calendar for each subgroup that offers a 125 plan.

All the documents you need can be found on the tax-advantaged accounts pages; click on 125 Plans: What You Need or HRA: What You Need.

November 1–30: Open Enrollment
Your co-op should complete all of its online participant enrollments during this period. Changes to enrollments can be made through November 30. This is a strict deadline that enables CBA to prepare all enrollments for an effective date of January 1, 2016. To provide tips and guidance for the enrollment process, we’ll be posting a step-by-step online tutorial for BAs before open enrollment begins. Stay tuned to I&FS Weekly to find out when the tutorial is available.

If you have questions about adopting or amending tax-advantaged accounts, contact CBA at 866.673.2299, option 1, then 4, or email cba.fsa.hra@nreca.coop.